This is John Batchelor, conversation with my colleague, Professor Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War

College, just returned from time in Chile to look at the changing landscape, political landscape,

of a naturally resource-rich country with wonderful opportunities given the demand for copper and lithium in the 21st century.

And Evan gives us a very quick lesson into how Chilean voting the last years was

distorting the economy and not providing for growth and what can be done.

Here's Evan on the back and forthing, back and forthing of the left of center in Chile,

coming to disappointment.

More tonight.

John, Chilean politics in many ways because of the prosperity has become what I would call

very Europeanized, an idea that you can have more of a social compact that decreases business

incentives to try to have more social goods, more free education, more benefit for the most needy.

And Chile has had a back and forth.

Traditionally, their politics post-dictatorship had been on the left. But you had a period where it was Michelle Bachelet

on the center left with the concentration, and then Sebastian Penaera on the center right, and then

it came back to Michelle Batchelé because you can't be elected twice. And then it came back to

Sebastian Penaera again. And it was at that kind of crux over, you know, Chile, people

frustrating that Chile had kind of gotten off the rails in terms of the once more, you know,

profitable pro-market society. And that maybe the, the project of the left in terms of social

benefits was, was dragging down the country to some degree. There were a lot of frustrations on both the left

and the right, but at the end of the day, that was really what led to the 2019 social protests

that led to this kind of expression of the college youth coming of age. Gabriol Boric is trying to say,

okay, we're going to have a new even farther to the left government.

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